Observe a laboratory activity or base your answer on past visits. How does your CT conduct a typical laboratory activity? How does he or she open the activity and organize student groups? How do students learn what they're expected to do during the period? Reflect on your reading about inquiry and your experience with the NECAP inquiry task. How did the laboratory activity you observe prepare students for the type of activities that might show up on the NECAP in the future? What inquiry elements would you strengthen? What science practices do you want to stress when you're teaching?
Labs are done in the classroom as their are several lab benches scattered throughout the room. Most of the classes that I have observed in the high school have had some laboratory element to them. I usually go on Friday afternoons. My cooperating teacher likes to give the kids something hands on to do on Fridays because they typically are the rowdiest at that time. The teacher opens the class by reviewing the concept that they are about to experiment with. For a lab with macromolecules he had them bring in a food wrapper. He then reviewed with them the terms lipid, starch, protein, etc. From here he handed them a lab procedure in which they were to test different solutions with different tests for iodine. There were specific instructions as to what tested for starch, proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and what a positive and negative test looked like. It was more of a cookbook lab than inquiry lab. However, I think for this case there had to be specific instructions. The students would not understand what the chemicals were testing for, nor what to conclude should they note a change in color. The inquiry really lay in the fact that the solutions were unknown and the students had to perform each of the tests on all of the solutions to try to identify which macromolecules that they contained. They were allowed to do any of the tests in any order they wanted. I don't think there would be too much I would change. The students do not have the prior background knowledge in chemistry to understand the chemical reactions. Maybe to add some inquiry I would add a fifth unknown that could be a lipid, protein, starch or a nucleic acid. I would let the students decide which test they wanted to test the chemical with. After talking with my high school cooperating teacher about inquiry, I am excited to see more of the labs that he has planned. A lot of the nonchemical labs he lets the students investigate more. When I am teaching at the high school, they will be working on evolution and ecology. I want to focus on students observations, especially with the ecology and allow them to perform some inquiry tasks, either with ecosystems in locality or ficitious ecosystems.
Observation/Reflection #3: A Matter of Style
Labs are done in the classroom as their are several lab benches scattered throughout the room. Most of the classes that I have observed in the high school have had some laboratory element to them. I usually go on Friday afternoons. My cooperating teacher likes to give the kids something hands on to do on Fridays because they typically are the rowdiest at that time. The teacher opens the class by reviewing the concept that they are about to experiment with. For a lab with macromolecules he had them bring in a food wrapper. He then reviewed with them the terms lipid, starch, protein, etc. From here he handed them a lab procedure in which they were to test different solutions with different tests for iodine. There were specific instructions as to what tested for starch, proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and what a positive and negative test looked like. It was more of a cookbook lab than inquiry lab. However, I think for this case there had to be specific instructions. The students would not understand what the chemicals were testing for, nor what to conclude should they note a change in color. The inquiry really lay in the fact that the solutions were unknown and the students had to perform each of the tests on all of the solutions to try to identify which macromolecules that they contained. They were allowed to do any of the tests in any order they wanted. I don't think there would be too much I would change. The students do not have the prior background knowledge in chemistry to understand the chemical reactions. Maybe to add some inquiry I would add a fifth unknown that could be a lipid, protein, starch or a nucleic acid. I would let the students decide which test they wanted to test the chemical with. After talking with my high school cooperating teacher about inquiry, I am excited to see more of the labs that he has planned. A lot of the nonchemical labs he lets the students investigate more. When I am teaching at the high school, they will be working on evolution and ecology. I want to focus on students observations, especially with the ecology and allow them to perform some inquiry tasks, either with ecosystems in locality or ficitious ecosystems.